La Tuna Canyon, CA Experts in Container Rental, Sales & Customization

The coldest storm of the season hit Southern California Thursday bringing gusty winds, rain, and mountain snow into the region – even the area’s first Blizzard Warning in over three decades.

RELATED: California rain timeline: Dangerous winter storm to bring snow, frigid temps

The winter storms shut down roads for hours before reopening, in addition to flooding multiple Southern California roads.

"Do not travel on any of the mountain roads unless it's absolutely essential," warned FOX 11 meteorologist Rick Dickert. "And bring your chains."

RELATED: Rare Blizzard Warning to go into effect for parts of Southern California

Models show there will be a break in the storm Sunday before rain chances return Monday.

Here’s what you can expect across Southland.

Los Angeles County

In Los Angeles County, some of the major roads were flooded by the heavy rain Friday.

In North Hollywood, multiple cars were stuck as the water rose on some of the roads. The flooding shut down Vineland Avenue between Vanowen Street and Sherman Way Friday night.

Some parts of LA even saw sleet and snow Thursday. FOX 11's Phil Shuman took a video of sleet coming down in Studio City while FOX 11's Chelsea Edwards saw hail and a small amount of snow at the Hollywood sign.

RELATED: Hollywood sign sees snow, hail during coldest storm in years

Dangerous rip currents are expected along the coast with large breaking waves of four to seven feet. Beachgoers are asked to stay out of the water due to dangerous surf conditions and the risk of ocean drowning.

Weather Alerts

The Los Angeles County Public Works declared a Phase 2 Mud and Debris Forecast through the weekend for fire burn areas under three years of recovery. This includes parts of Azusa, Duarte, Glendale, Monrovia, the city of Los Angeles, La Tuna Canyon, and Sunland-Tujunga.

Residents can report storm-related damage, traffic signal outages, flooding or other weather-related concerns to LA County Public Works by calling 1-800-675-4357.

LA’s mountain communities will get hit the hardest with continuous snow expected through Saturday night. On Friday, NWS said wind gusts have the potential to reach 70 mph. With the mix of heavy snow and gusty winds, a Blizzard Warning goes into effect starting Friday morning.

San Bernardino and Riverside counties

Inland Empire communities above 2,000 first experienced the storm's impact over the course of the week.

Residents in Yucaipa saw a rare blanket of snow that started early Thursday morning.

The snow hit Highway 18 between Crestline and Lake Arrowhead and for now, the roadway remains open. On Highway 189, one of the steepest in the area, over two dozen vehicles became stuck after a multi-car pileup.

For those who don’t reside in the mountains in cities such as Ontario and Corona, showers are expected Thursday, then heavy rain Friday and Saturday. On Friday night, wind gusts could reach up to 35 mph.

Weather Alerts

Orange County

Orange County residents can expect showers Thursday before heavy rain strikes Friday and Saturday, with a punch of gusty winds. NWS said precipitation amounts will be between a half and three-quarters of an inch.

Weather Alerts

Ventura County

Heavy rainfall was expected to strike Ventura County Friday and Saturday. When the storm hits its peak, thunderstorms are possible. Wind gusts could reach up to 30 mph Friday night, with lows in the 30s.

Weather Alerts

For all of the Ventura County mountain communities, including the Santa Susana Mountains, strong winds and cold wind chills will come with the snow. A Blizzard Warning went into effect at 4 a.m. Friday and will last to 4 p.m. Saturday. The NWS predicts total snow accumulations between 6 and 12 inches for elevations between 2,000 and 4,000 feet and up to 5 feet for higher elevations.

Weather Alerts

Evacuation Warnings

The following areas are under an evacuation warning from Thursday, February 23rd at 3 p.m. through Saturday, February 25th at 10 a.m., unless conditions stabilize or worsen.

Officials said travel is not recommended and should be restricted to emergencies only.

Students staying in town for USC’s spring recess deserve a break, too. Our community team compiled a list of ways to enjoy the time off without having to leave Southern California.

Seasonal Events

Los Angeles and the greater Southern California region will host multiple pop-up events and festivals throughout the duration of spring break. Upcoming events range from desert art installations to an apocalyptic Los Feliz brunch.

The Redondo Beach Pier is hosting its 49th annual Festival of the Kite on Sunday, March 12 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. This free community event includes live music, a hot dog on a stick eating contest, giveaways and multiple prize categories for kite flying.

Saturday, March 4 marked the opening of Coachella Valley’s Desert X international art exhibition, which will run until May 7. The exhibition includes 12 outdoor installations by global artists across 40 miles, including sculpture, painting, photography, writing, architecture, film and music.

“Desert X 2023 presents a compelling opportunity to connect communities around the globe, especially when it comes to how we survive in a world with increasingly volatile environmental conditions,” said newly appointed Co-Curator Diana Campbell in a press release. “For my first project of this scale in the United States I am driven to draw translocal connections across contexts of extreme weather — from the droughts of the California desert to the floods of Bangladesh.”

National nonprofit RE:Her’s annual “10 Days” food festival supporting women-owned restaurants kicked off on Friday, March 3 and will end on Sunday, March 12. RE:Her, short for “Regarding Her,” works to “advance women-identifying and nonbinary food and beverage entrepreneurs and leaders,” according to their mission statement.

This year, the festival includes a casino night in North Hollywood on Friday, March 10 and a drag king brunch downtown on Sunday, March 12.

The 27th annual Hermosa Beach St. Patrick’s Day Parade is set to take place on Saturday, March 11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will also be a free pre-parade party on Friday, March 10 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with food provided at Patrick Molloys, a local Irish pub.

Emmanuel Cadengo, the executive chef behind elevated Los Feliz restaurant Atrium, designed a unique, fungi-forward brunch inspired by the HBO post-apocalyptic drama series ‘The Last of Us.’ The themed meal is scheduled for Sunday, March 12, from 10 a.m to 3 p.m. and will feature a wide variety of fungi sourced from Smallhold’s local organic urban mushroom farm. For an idea of cost, Time Out ranks Atrium two out of five dollar signs. Reservations are available on Atrium’s website and OpenTable.

Timeless Activities

Some activities transcend the seasons. Look no further than L.A. for a variety of intergenerational spring break activities that stand the test of time.

No, really. Whether it’s the Runyon Canyon Loop or Eaton Canyon Trail, the great outdoors make for a memorable solo or group activity. For a serene night hike, try the classic Griffith Park for unmatched views of the city of stars.

Spend the day in Hollywood at Universal Studios to check out their new Super Nintendo World or make the drive down to Anaheim for a magical day at Disneyland. For more cost-friendly options, we recommend Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, or Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park. The USC Ticket Office offers discounted theme park tickets.

The USC Ticket Office offers discounted movie tickets for AMC Theatres, Cinemark Theatres, Laemmle Theatres and Regal Entertainment Group. Scream VI revives the iconic meta horror franchise, Creed III boasts a pair of Hollywood hunks and Cocaine Bear begs to be meme-ified. Plus, several theatres are screening films nominated for the 95th Academy Awards.

Food to Eat

South Los Angeles local businesses conquer students’ taste buds, from Spudnuts Donuts on 30th Street and Figueroa to La Barca on Vermont Ave. But for students seeking a change of scenery, here are our top eats beyond the free Lyft zone.

Open until 2 a.m., Dan Sung Sa rose to Koreatown nightlife fame for its endless small plates, intoxicating soju drinks and graffitied wooden walls you can leave your mark on. This Korean tavern does not take reservations, so come not only with an empty stomach and eager wallet but also a willingness to wait.

Michael’s recommendations: the dumbbells, kimchi pancakes, ginkgo nut skewers and spicy tuna hand rolls.

Spend happy hour at Same Same in Silverlake

Silverlake’s Same Same wine bar and Thai street food haunt offers a happy hour from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Their menu includes noodles, curries and fried rice dishes. Colorful paper parasols hanging from the ceiling will make you feel like you’re in tropical paradise.

Michael liked the pad se ew with tofu.

Settle your insomnia at Fairfax’s historic Canter’s Deli

Famed 24-hour Jewish diner Canter’s Deli offers matzo ball soup, pastrami sandwiches and golden-brown potato pancakes. Plus, their menu has a rich selection of vegetarian and vegan options. Canter’s makes a great late-night destination after your night out doing, well… whatever it is college students do at night during spring break.

The town of Buellton does not initially seem like an ideal place to grasp the allure of the Santa Ynez Valley, a rugged swath of Santa Barbara County that's home to one of California's most intriguing wine regions. There are no rolling hills of grapevines, no lavish vineyards, no fancy hotels. Buellton's most noteworthy attractions are a restaurant that has proudly served split pea soup since 1924 and a roadside curiosity just outside the city limits called OstrichLand USA, where flocks of the springy-necked birds strut in an open field for tourists. The rest, to the untrained eye, is a strip of motels and gas stations.

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“Yet this is where a lot of the actual magic happens,” Scott Sampler remarked one sun-speckled afternoon. The video director turned winemaker was leading me through Industrial Way, a cluster of warehouses off the main drag that has for decades been a hub of local wine production. Emblematic of the Santa Ynez Valley's back-road charm, the district has in recent years evolved into an unexpectedly prime spot to spend a languid afternoon. There is a rollicking brewery, two small-batch liquor distilleries, a smattering of ad hoc tasting rooms, and one of the Valley's most essential restaurants, Industrial Eats, where eclectic small plates are served with casual nonchalance at communal tables.

Sampler ushered me into his winery, Central Coast Group Project, a spartan space where he works alone crafting Italian- and Rhône-inspired natural wine and blends that are featured at restaurants like Horses, the celebrity magnet in Los Angeles. His tastings are informal affairs, with appointments made over Instagram and wines of astonishing complexity served in a nook cluttered with esoteric art books and vintage vinyl. “It's far from the bougie, supercurated wine-country thing, but that's kind of the point,” he said with a wry laugh while pouring me tastes, music blaring, as grapes from a recent harvest fermented in vats a few feet away. “What we've got going on here is a real vibe.”

If you live two and a half hours southeast in Los Angeles, as I do, it is this vibe that has made the Santa Ynez Valley the weekend retreat favored by those seeking the thrill of discovery as much as a scintillating Pinot Noir. Though not exactly a secret—the region was the backdrop for the 2004 oenophile film Sideways—it has remained overshadowed by Napa and Sonoma, quietly maturing into a destination where old-school kitsch and new-school sophistication braid into something singular. Once hardscrabble cowboy country and still an epicenter of horse ranching, the region is composed of a number of small towns, each with a unique flair. Up the road from Buellton is Solvang, settled by the Danish in 1911, which looks like a scene from Hans Christian Andersen with its main street of windmills, gabled roofs, spires, and clock towers. Los Alamos, meanwhile, occupies a charming Old West strip so lovingly preserved that you wouldn't be surprised if a midday duel broke out. Los Olivos, once best known as the site of Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, features a walkable downtown of pastel Victorians. Over the course of a few days spent driving the winding roads among these enclaves, bopping into stately vineyards and slipping into restaurants for excellent meals, I felt connected to something genuinely and distinctly Californian—as opposed to the California packaged for global consumption.

“You come here and you just get instantly addicted—to the raw open nature, that relaxing wine-country feeling without the corporate veil now associated with Napa,” said Kimberly Walker, whose adoration for the area led her and two partners to purchase a ramshackle motel on a hill at the edge of Los Alamos nearly five years ago and transform it into Skyview, a sleek hotel with 360-degree views of the Valley's oak-studded vistas. I holed up there for part of my stay before checking out her second, the two-year-old Hotel Ynez, another chicly reimagined motel. Walker's properties have brought new panache to the region while paying tribute to its rugged frontier heritage. “The towns here are still places where every business is owner-operated in the truest sense,” she told me. “The owner is preparing your food, the winemaker is pouring your wine, and everyone you meet has a fascinating story of how they ended up here.”

Indeed, to spend time in the Valley is to understand it as a place shaped by people chasing something personal and ephemeral—an ethos that goes back to the earliest days of winemaking here. “No one here cared what anyone else was doing, and it's still kind of the Wild West in terms of a frontier wine region,” said Pete Stolpman when I visited him one morning at Stolpman Vineyards, the winery he runs in Ballard Canyon. It's a sprawling 220-acre property where visitors can book hikes followed by a tasting at his outpost in Los Olivos. His father, Tom, a lawyer, bought the land in 1990; Pete, disillusioned with his career in business, started running it in 2009, specializing in Syrah and Roussanne grapes and creating some of the area's most delicious wines.

Driving me through the vineyard's dirt roads in his pickup, Stolpman waxed poetic about the unique topography that led wily pioneers to first plant grapes here in the early 1970s. “We're in what's called a transverse valley,” he explained, noting that while most California wine regions run north to south, the Santa Ynez mountains are oriented west to east, allowing for the chill of the Pacific to enter the valley unencumbered. In addition to creating a reliably striking moment every morning—as we bounced along, a blanket fog was being dissipated by the sun—the result is a Xanadu for winemaking: a tapestry of microclimates that makes for a longer growing season and allows a dizzying number of grape varietals to thrive. “The reason it feels like such a young, pioneering place is because, well, it really is,” said Stolpman. “When it comes to wine, we're still figuring out everything that can be grown on and made from this land.”

Stolpman has seen the area change over the years, especially lately, with pandemic-rattled transplants moving in from LA. New businesses have been springing up at a faster clip, most notably the Inn at Mattei's Tavern, a brand-new outpost from Auberge Resorts in Los Olivos. Built around Mattei's Tavern, a historic inn dating back to 1886, the property introduces a previously unimaginable level of luxury and global recognition to the Santa Ynez Valley. Did Stolpman, I wondered, view the glossy arrival as a threat to the scrappy spirit he was extolling? “Santa Barbara County does not make such developments easy,” he told me. “So it's not like we're about to be inundated with corporations.” Pausing to take in the epic sweep of land from his vineyard, he told me the recent changes are in keeping with the Valley's roots: “What I like is that it all started with wine in the purest sense. First you had the grape growers, people like my dad, and now you now have everything you want with world-class wine—great hotels, cool restaurants—coming of age alongside the wine industry.”

When people talk about the culinary evolution of the Santa Ynez Valley, they invariably end up talking about Daisy and Greg Ryan, a young couple who have been central to putting the region on the radar of seasoned foodies. Having cut their teeth working together in establishments like New York's Per Se and Austin's Jeffery's and Josephine House, they moved to the Valley to raise a family. Shortly afterward, in 2018, they opened Bell's, a restaurant set in a former bank in Los Alamos, which somehow manages to be both an unpretentious neighborhood joint and a destination dining establishment. Daisy, who grew up in the area, runs the kitchen, creating hyperlocal set-course menus that riff on classic French cuisine, recently earning Bell's its first Michelin star. Like many Valley visitors, my girlfriend and I took our first trip to the area after scoring seats at the restaurant's small bar, where we spent the following few hours enjoying a meal like no other in a trancelike stupor.

The Los Angeles City Council this week signaled its interest in potentially expanding an unusual pilot program underway in the San Fernando Valley aimed at reducing the number of homeless people living in recreational vehicles that have popped up along city streets.

The council voted 13-0 on Tuesday, Dec. 13, to request information from agencies involved in the pilot program, including an overview and associated costs, and to request from city staff a report on how the encampment reduction program might be funded citywide.

Piloted in Council District 7, the program was successful in removing 20 RVs off city streets and housing 25 homeless individuals, with another 12 enrolled and waiting for housing placement, between Feb. 1 and Sept. 15, according to Councilmember Monica Rodriguez. She represents Northeast San Fernando Valley communities including Sylmar, Pacoima, Sunland-Tujunga, North Hills and La Tuna Canyon.

Following the Tuesday vote, Rodriguez said she’s confident the approach will have positive results in other council districts.

“Angelenos have been rightfully concerned about RV encampments for years,” Rodriguez said. “This model (incentivizes) housing placement and permanently removes, not relocates, the issues to other communities.”

The goal is to give those living in RVs an incentive to voluntarily trade in their vehicles in exchange for temporary or permanent housing, by offering them $500 Visa gift cards. The result, supporters say, is that it not only provides individuals an opportunity to transition to housing, but it removes from the streets RVs that pose a risk to public safety.

Often, the RVs block visibility for drivers on the road and leak sewage onto the streets. Additionally, there have been incidents in which heaters or propane inside the RVs caught fire.

“It’s taking this systematic approach, which I believe has been incredibly beneficial to not only eradicating the RVs in the neighborhoods, but more importantly, getting these individuals to agree to leaving these facilities and accepting housing opportunities that are suitable to their needs,” Rodriguez said during a news conference last month.

The program in District 7 is the result of a partnership between West Valley Homes YES, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and LA Family Housing.

This week’s L.A. City Council vote directs service providers and city departments to write up a report outlining each agency’s role in facilitating the housing placement and the disposing of the RVs, as well as strategies for scaling up the program.

L.A. saw a dramatic 41% increase in the number of RVs on city streets between 2019 and 2022, according to Rodriguez’s office.

Kim Olsen, executive director of West Valley Homes YES, in a statement last month, spoke of the importance of a program that uses incentives to encourage people to voluntarily transition from living on the streets, instead of through force.

“Prioritizing agency and dignity rather than coercion is comprehensively effective,” she said, “and long-term success will come only with the provision of housing that meets those same standards.”

Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness on Monday, her first day in her new role as the city’s top executive. That declaration, which the City Council signed off on Tuesday, allows her administration to fast-track the creation of new housing units for people facing homelessness.

Monica Rodriguez and homeless and housing groups said on Friday Nov. 4 that they succeeded in reducing the number of homeless people living in RVs in Rodriguez’ City Council District 7 under a “first-of-its-kind” pilot program in which homeless campers were offered incentives to give up their their vehicles for disposal.

Rodriguez says that homeless RVs grew citywide by 41% from 2019 to 2022, and called on the City Council to adopt a citywide effort patterned on her seven-month pilot project. She reported that in her pilot program 20 RVs were removed from city streets, 25 RV dwellers were housed, and 12 other people are awaiting placement.

“Developing this collaborative model between city departments and service providers has created a clear process that accelerates the results we all desire; housing the homeless, improving public safety and cleaning up our neighborhoods,” Rodriguez said.

Under the District 7 RV Pilot Program, she said, people living in recreational vehicles were voluntarily moved to interim or permanent housing. She pledged on Friday to spend $350,000 from her office discretionary fund to expand the pilot across her district, which includes the communities of Sylmar, Mission Hills, Pacoima, Sunland-Tujunga, Lake View Terrace, Shadow Hills, La Tuna Canyon and part of North Hills East.

Rodriguez noted in a press statement that RVs often pose a threat to public safety by blocking visibility for those driving by, leaking sewage onto city streets, and creating fires when heaters or propane are used inside.

She appeared at a Friday press conference with Kim Olsen, executive director of nonprofit West Valley Homes Yes; Brittnee Hill of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA); and Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, CEO and president of LA Family Housing to explain the success of the Council District 7 RV Pilot Program.

“With many residents experiencing the impact of RV encampments, this model (incentivizes) housing placement and permanently removes, not relocates, the issues to other communities,” Rodriguez said. “Developing this collaborative model between city departments and service providers has created a clear process that accelerates the results we all desire; housing the homeless, improving public safety and cleaning up our neighborhoods.”

“This program demonstrates that meeting individual’s needs for housing and services, as well as deep partnerships across agencies, is the solution to homelessness,” Olsen said.

“We are proud to join with organizations like West Valley Homes Yes, and LA Family Housing, who are equally passionate and dedicated to ensuring people living in RVs come inside,” said Hill, of LAHSA. She called for expanding the program.